Friday, January 02, 2015

The best or not of 2014!

20 Great games from 2014 - Part 1 - the part that's not about games!

Well, another year has come and gone,
and as is your custom (and mine), here I am, some dude who writes
about games on the internet, being pretentious and writing about his
best games of 2014. I'm going to do this in much the same fashion as
I did last year, 20 games, random order, some thoughts, and I'm going
to carry on about my day with little worry over consequence. But
first, let us discourse about the year that was 2014...

The 8th generation is now
fully upon us, with Sony's Playstation 4 and Microsoft's XboxOne now
dominating the popular mindset, but when I compare this generation
with that of the previous (IE Xbox360/PS3/Wii) I can't help but feel
two things, disappointment and maybe a little anger. We at Blast
Processing pride ourselves on generally trying not to be a cynical or
sadistic pack of haters, and when we review, whether games or
consoles, we always dive in with as clean a slate as is possible and
build our reviews from the foundation up, rather than starting with a
“perfect 10” and tearing down. The following trends made it
ridiculously difficult NOT to remove our “Cynicism-retardant”
underwear:

Non-Hype: I wish I had a dollar for
every shit click-bait headline that read : 'EXEC A' from
'MANUFACTURER B' says “The Best is yet to come! Stay Tuned! We got
big things coming!!!!1!!1” Both Sony and Microsoft were guilty of
this rabble rousing nonsense several times throughout the year, and
when the second fall season of your NEXT GEN MONSTER consists of
Driveclub and Sunset Overdrive? Well, lets just say you need to fuck
right off and start putting your money where your mouth is. Does
anyone remember 2007? Year 2 for Sony's PS3, +1 for Microsoft's
360... Also quite possibly the single best year in the history of
Console gaming. New games, new concepts, new ideas, new intellectual
properties, ridiculous ambition, and technically stunning product
that announced, very loudly, “The NEXT GEN has arrived!” With
game development supposedly much easier on the new current gen
machines, we should be sitting atop a similar Renaissance; instead
we're getting sequels, remakes, and unfinished tangles... which leads
me to...

Unfinished games: Assassin's Creed:
Unity, Driveclub, Halo: The Master Chief Collection, Lords of the
Fallen, Forza Horizon 2, Dragon Age: Inquisition, and in truth,
several more titles all shipped this year in a state of completion
that required either huge day 1 patches, or several colossal updates
in the weeks after release. We're not talking bug fixes or
player-discovered errors either, we're talking horrid framerates,
game breaking bugs, non-functional features, and in some cases,
totally broken, unfinished games. This is ENTIRELY UNACCEPTABLE!
Granted, I enjoyed, liked, or even loved some of the games I mention
above, but for god's sake! Would it have killed Ubisoft to Delay
Assassin's Creed Unity into December to get it working properly?
Instead they're stuck paying colossal overtime and issuing free games
as a means of apology to the fans. And speaking of updates...

Updates and Installs: This one is really, and I hate to pick on any one company
here, directed at Microsoft. Guys, It is entirely evident that you
compromised some integral features on your shiny new console when the
fans took a dump down Mattrick's throat after the Xbone was
announced. I picked up an Xbox One early in 2014 (ditching The Wii-U
to facilitate the purchase), and was met with over an hour of the
dreaded “install-dowload-update-install” loop before I could play
my first game. Once things were up and running, I had some great fun
with Ryse, Killer Instinct, and Forza Motorsport 5, in spite of it
being a stripped down shadow of Forza 4 (but I digress), but every
time a title demanded an update, I was stuck in utter limbo for
anywhere from 20-45 minutes! Horizon 2 was by far the worst culprit,
45 minutes when I purchased it, and then after my THIRD 30 minute
wait in as many weeks, I ditched your goddamn console altogether...
there it is. I have a Wii-U again now, and my blood pressure is
significantly lower. Sony had their own issues this year as well, to
be certain, but that's no fault of their hardware, the longest wait I
had was about 20 minutes (Destiny). Homnestly, I think the best thing
you guys could do right now is take the Xbone back to the metal,
strip out the shit win 8 inspired dashboard and archaic software
update scheme, look at how the 360 was put together at launch, and
re-release that sucker as a stripped out hardcore gaming machine.
Good bye “resolution gate”, hello awesome game console! And
speaking of which...

Resolution-gate: 900p? 1080p? So much
hubbub over graphical fidelity. The dick-waving/measuring competition
that this turned into was nothing shy of absolute ridiculousness.
Look, Microsoft engineered a shitty front end dahsboard that eats
resources, and thusly, the games run at a slightly lower resolution
that is in turn upscaled to full 1080p on your average display in
order to stay playable. We get it. How many XboxOne gamers see a
difference when playing the games on their 42” LCD? None, zip,
zilch, nadda. You know why? Because A: They aren't playing it on a
PS4, and B: The differences are so minute on anything smaller than,
say 80 inches? That they would have to be some form of ultra
resolution sensitive Nexus 6 replicant to see any fucking difference.
Where things get really foul however, is when certain console
manufacturers offer ad revenue and support to publishers, who in turn
gimp their software on other consoles to achieve parity on the
weakest link. Early on, I blamed said console manufacturer, but my
stance there has softened considerably after doing a little digging.
For one thing, they just wanted parity, they weren't actively seeking
to injure the other parties, just pushing developers to put a little
more effort forth into getting stuff up to snuff on their console, I
can understand that. The flipside however, is one particular
developer just throwing their hands up and dumping a game (that I
won't name) in sub HD-resolution in order to satisfy the needs of the
agreement. Lazy. It wouldn't have even mattered much if the game
wasn't a choppy, buggy, unfinished mess when it hit. That doesn't
really do much to sway people over to their “Well it's in sub-HD
because of our AI, or interface or blah blah blah”. No it isn't –
it's sub HD because you managed your team poorly, and you didn't
finish your game. And the review scores agree... even if I don't
necessarily...

Divisive Reviews: Last, and probably
least... In spite of things not really eclipsing that wonderful year
that was 2007 (or runner up year 2001), there was still quite a bit
of good, high-quality stuff released over the last 12 months, and
quite a few games sent on a woeful death march when (particularly
American) game review outlets took a dump all
over them. I won't cite individual reviewers or websites, but this
sums it up perfectly: Polygon actually had to publish an article
called “Destiny isn't on our game of the year list, but we Can't
stop playing it!” Which to me is about the single most INSANE piece
of shit bit of contrarian douchery posing as journalism I have ever read. Destiny was a bewilderingly good
game, that was torn asunder by a wave of cynical, pretentious hacks
who didn't bother to take the time to get to know it. It's the gaming
equivalent of Guardians of the Galaxy getting a 0.5 out of 5 review
by some Geek in a College Newspaper. Alien: Isolation was another
poor victim (though everyone outside of the US loves this game it
would seem). Look, we get that reviews are subjective, and maybe
there's this pang of lust for “bigger, bolder, and better” that's
continuously being blue-balled by software that's decidedly less than
what we expect from NEXT GEN: YEAR TWO. That doesn't make it fair to
immediately dismiss credible, earnestly crafted, and above all
competent software. Watch_Dogs is a GOOD game! Driveclub is a GOOD
game! Alien: Isolation and Destiny are downright fantastic! These do
not belong on “Years worst” lists... Anyone who does so is
woefully out of touch.

I'm not even going to touch #Gamergate, nope nope nope...

With all of that out of the way, let's
get to why you're really here... Part II